All week during Mobile World Congress, presenters focused on the rapid trajectory of mobile services. End users in many verticals — healthcare, education, government and financial services — as well as mobile operators and vendors are now asking: “What's next?”

On Wednesday, the Mobile World Congress presentation, “Up Close and Personal: The Power of Big Data,” focused on the connections between ubiquitous mobile connectively and big data. With access to big data-enabled subscriber intelligence, mobile operators are able to adopt a more customer-focused approach to their operations.

Alcatel Lucent CEO Michel Combes said that the mobile industry is at a turning point. As adoption of mobile devices spike, network optimization will be required to meet the usability and speed demands of users, without sacrificing security. Legacy networks and performance management techniques will simply not suffice. According to Combes, the U.S. has been able to invest in high-speed broadband networks and cloud networks, which have created an active and “virtuous” digital ecosystem. Europe, however, will need to invest in innovation to break free of its “vicious cycle,” in which communications service providers can only compete on price, rather than innovation. In this region, as well as Asia, new mobile products and services will produce profits that can, in turn, fund future investments.

President and CEO of South Korean Internet service provider SK Planet, Jinwoo So, expounded upon Combes' comments regarding the Asian mobile market. He called South Korea “the land of mobile” — a title justified by the fact that 75 percent of mobile users in South Korea rely on LTE networks, the best penetration rate in the world. A robust mobile infrastructure like South Korea's will facilitate the application of big data by companies to better their understand customers.

EMC CEO Joseph Tucci described similar efforts that have played out following EMC's partnership with Vodafone. EMC has used big data to help the mobile company understand the quality of experience (QoE) its customers are receiving. On a similar note, we at InfoVista have also discussed the importance of applying data to improve network performance.

The future of big data is beholden to the evolution of the digital ecosystem, including mobile and cloud services. Through targeted future investments, mobile services and big data will work hand-in-hand to optimize the customer experience.